Archive
CPG & Food Sovereignty
Who Stole Zobo? Africa Grew It, the World Bottled It, and Nobody Sent the Invoice
Somewhere in northern Nigeria, a farmer is drying a crimson flower in the sun. A few months later, that same flower turns up in a German tea blend, a Mexican street cart and a London wellness café. It is priced at a premium and wears a…
The Fish Paradox: Why Africa Feeds the World's Aquaculture Industry While Its Own People Go Fish-Hungry
By quantity, Africa buys more fish than it sells. By value, it sells more than it buys. That single sentence contains one of the more revealing failures in African trade — and it's not a rounding error. It's structural, and it's getting…
The Great Tamarind Heist: How Africa Lost Its Own Sour Superfruit to India — And Why It's Time to Take It Back
There is a fruit growing wild across the Sahel, the savannas of Sudan, the parklands of West Africa, and the dry forests of Madagascar that most of the world thinks belongs to someone else. It is in the sinigang your Filipino friend swears…
The Exit Pattern: Why FMCG Multinationals Keep Failing in Nigeria
It isn't "a tough market." It's forex convertibility risk, policy unpredictability, and entry-structure failure — and a small group of local champions has already cracked the code.
The Zambeef Story: How a Land Rover, 60 Employees and a Single Butchery Built Africa's Largest Integrated Beef Business
Zambeef's origin story reads less like a corporate case study and more like a frontier tale. Francis Grogan moved to Zambia from Ireland in 1991 after answering a newspaper ad for a meat factory management job. He soon partnered with a…
The Jungle Oats Story: The Tiger in the Grass and Africa's Oat Opportunity
Jungle Oats is South Africa's best-known breakfast oatmeal brand — a rolled-oats porridge sold in a box featuring a tiger crouched in tall grass. It is a processed cereal product, not a raw commodity: oat groats that are steamed and rolled…
Fonio's moment: can West Africa's ancient grain hold its premium on UK shelves?
From Senegalese fields to London delis, fonio is a test case for African CPG brand building.